Alici May

In 2005 Alici was widowed and living with her four young children in her mother’s one-room mud hut. Her prospects were grim. Alici and her mother struggled to feed themselves and their children. But then Alici was selected to be a founding member of the first potato co-op in the village of Idweli. She received a loan to purchase high quality seed potatoes, fertilizer, and pest controls. She signed a contract to repay the loan with interest over three years. Alici is a determined woman. She became a very successful at growing potatoes and paid back her loan in full within two years, enabling a new member to join the co-op faster than planned. Alici says,  “The profits I made with potato farming and the training I received on entrepreneurship helped me establish a small grocery, a charcoal business, a breakfast stand at the bus stop, a tailoring business and house rental projects.  I am now a successful businesswoman.” Alici also has become a leader in the community serving on the village MVCC and on a local board.

This success has enabled Alici to build herself and her mother a new house with concrete bricks and a tin roof. They also took in another most vulnerable child. The house has electricity and running water, a rarity in Idweli. She has put lighting under the eaves of the roof to allow her neighbor’s children to do homework at night and installed an outside water tap for her neighbors’ use.